By the time they reach the coding stage, many web projects are a tangle of exceptions -- and that can make standards-based development a nightmare. Better planning may be exactly what you need to avoid markup derangement or, even worse, a dysfunctional product.

Ajax offers the ability to avoid both needless browser behavior like page reloads and useful browser behavior like error handling. When good web apps go bad, Peter Quinsey's guidelines and techniques can help you and your users stay informed and productive.

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Columnists

How sustainable is a model where social networks take a central role in our daily routine? Antoine Lefeuvre believes there’s growing awareness that social networking tools don’t necessarily bring out the best in us. While we do want and appreciate tools that let us engage with others and do things together, we’re getting tired of the high price in attention and stress.

February 26, 2015

From the Blog

A decade ago here in A List Apart, we published a radical article by Peter-Paul Koch arguing for custom attributes in markup. Today, Mat Marquis takes a look back at how times have changed, and shows how PPK’s idea has worked its way into the web.

New content projects present a classic chicken-and-egg problem: should we start with the words, or focus on the structure they’ll take? There are benefits and challenges either way, but Eileen Webb has recently become a believer that starting with structure creates a better workflow for developers, designers and content creators alike.